star school

homeschooling a strong-willed child is a challenge for any parent. homeschooling a strong-willed kid with aspergers is an extra blob of stress and required creativity.

we have many days where brooke is mad about school. she'd much rather spend her days playing with toys, reading her fun books and inventing games in her mind than sitting around working on crap that doesn't mean anything to her. she tells me that school is torture and no amount of explaining or cajoling can convince her that it's worth it to just do the work without complaining.

however, i've found that if i let her keep one of her toys with her & somehow figure out a way to make her assignments pertain to whatever her current obsession is, it's much less painful for both of us. her obsession of the moment is the warriors series about tough cats who live in clans and fight a lot while taking care of their own. our house is filled with words like "tigerstar", "star clan," "ravenpaw," "kitty pet" and "two-leg". she's wearing cat ears & dressed all in gray today & can barely speak a word that isn't about these cats, but we need to get a school day in since i worked a lot and spent a day away from the house, giving all our money to the car repair shop this week.

so, in order to get brooke to engage & participate in math today, we determined that she's in "alpha school" and she hopes to become a clan leader one day, so she has to know how to add numbers so she could supply her omegas with food. now she's got an assignment to write about a sporting event, but since she's never been to a sporting event & we don't watch sports on tv, i changed it to a warrior cat event. this makes the work a million times easier because she has very little trouble coming up with a story about the cats in her head.

for lunch, she ate red squirrel (apple) and a pigeon sandwich (grilled cheese). for culinary class, we're going to make dinner. the menu includes vole intestines with muscle bits and blood sauce (spaghetti squash with chunky tomatoes and a little red sauce) and a desert of fish egg souffle (cadbury eggs).

later we'll work on maps because an alpha can't patrole her territory if she doesn't understand the borders and landmarks. and at some point we'll study squirrels. because it's good for a predator to have a strong understanding about the health and habits of the prey being stalked. tomorrow we're going to an exotic bird fair where she'll learn about foods from around the world. and we're working on a banner for art class that we'll hang up, declaring our kitchen to be "star school". because star = alpha in her world. she also blogged about warrior cats to practice typing. she even did the embedding of the video and put the picture in herself.

i wonder what next week will bring. and what kind of adjustments i'll have to make in order to get the school work done. it's always an adventure for this teacher.